Thinking Thoughts 2

I think a key to be able to thinking more deeply about simple matters of life is to first cut out distractions. And the biggest culprit would be the endless social media apps on our phones. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. In the end, they are just noise!

Noise clutters up whatever available space in your mind, clouding the important things. When you suddenly remove all the mindless scrolling, you are suddenly left with a lot of empty space. You feel uncomfortable, you start fidgeting, because you don’t want to be alone with your own thoughts. Then you get bored, your mind doesn’t have any easy tasks to default to. That’s when real thinking sprouts.

You begin to take notice of little things in your normal, mundane life. And you actually ponder about some scenarios you encounter. You observe more and reflect on yourself even more. You realise things that were there the whole time and you learn things about yourself you never knew before.

Since uninstalling Instagram, I have only reinstalled it briefly for 2 days to only uninstall it again. I do feel more at peace and I reflect more on myself. Writing daily helps a lot too. A funny thing is that I had wanted to try out this writing exercise a year ago but just couldn’t think of anything to write about. Now words flow to me more easily. Maybe it’s because I had accepted that it was okay to be a little more vulnerable in my writings.

Today I had a chat with one of my tutors, Paul, about application to grad schools and whether or not to do it after some working experience. He shared his own experience, about how he ended up being in academia. I was surprised to learn that he never planned on being an academic and all the events that took place were just a random series and he happened to be there for it at the right time. It made me more relieved because it was okay that I don’t know exactly what I want to do now. I just need to do what I can do now at my best.